Five year check-in

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer. As a child of an alcoholic, I have spent my fair share of time at AA and Alateen meetings, and have seen this prayer on my mother's refrigerator for the last twenty three years. While it is primarily seen as a prayer for alcoholics, I'm choosing to use it to channel my frustrations a little more effectively.

You see, five years ago, I graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree in business. And right now, all I have to show for it is a few thousand dollars of debt. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change.

I married a soldier over spring break of my senior year (okay, so college got me a few grand in debt and a husband) and shortly after graduation, we moved to Washington state. He deployed almost immediately, so I put my career on hold in order to have the flexible schedule I would need to see him while he was on his two weeks of R&R mid-deployment, to go home for the holidays and see family, to be able to take time off when family came to visit me during my very lonely year, and to adapt to him returning home after a year of being gone. Once we had reintegrated, I started to look for a position that could lead to a career. The courage to change the things I can.

It took me four months to go from part-time retail in a clothing store to part-time retail in a jewelry store. An upgrade, but not by much. It took six more months for me to find a normal, full-time, Monday through Friday nine to five position, and that was by sheer luck of knowing someone who knew someone. In those six months I did not stop looking for a non-retail job. There was frustration and heartbreak, and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and despair every time I came home from an interview and spent the next week on tenterhooks waiting for an answer. The serenity to accept the things I can not change.

But that position worked out fantastically for me, and I loved every day I spent in that office. I loved learning about mortgages, how the different loans worked, and how to troubleshoot some of the extensive and complicated issues that can come up in the home loan process. I even loved the process of getting licensed as a loan originator. I loved the people I worked with and the positive work environment that my branch manager and operations manager worked so hard to keep. There were tough days, but there were never days that I was dreading going to work or wanted to run out the front door and never look back (and I absolutely can not say the same thing about retail). But then... my husband received orders to report to South Carolina for a six month course. He and I went back and forth for a long, long time over whether I should move with him or just stay in Washington. My managers knew I was in a tough place and they totally went to bat for me with our home office to make me working remotely feasible. I finally heard that the home office had approved me working remotely for the Washington branch from South Carolina, and after we were here for a few weeks we found out we would be going to North Carolina next. I was hoping that I would be able to transition from the Washington branch of the company that I worked for to the North Carolina branch, but that did not happen. I am extremely, extremely disappointed about how that played out. It feels like the home office of my former employer essentially washed their hands of me once we moved, and they didn't even let me keep working for the Washington branch that had worked so hard to keep me on the team. If I had known I'd be cut two months into our stay, I would not have moved to South Carolina. But - the serenity to accept the things I can not change.

So year and a few months later, here I am again. Unemployed and on a job hunt. Most days it feels like I will never find a job again; the job market is shit to begin with, and where we will be in NC is a substantially smaller market than where we lived in WA. But here is where the freakin' wisdom to know the difference of what I can and can't change comes into play - I can't change that I'm unemployed. But I can change what I'm doing while I'm waiting for a job opening. Dear self, take the rage and heartbreak and disappointment and helplessness and channel it - get your ass back into running. I can change my expectations - the way mortgage rates are rising, I am sure a lot of companies will be trying to do more with less, and during the last two months that I have been looking for work in North Carolina I have seen zero openings in what I would like to be my line of work. I can change my perspective on available positions. I may not end up working in the mortgage industry, but I'll just have to hope that wherever I end up next will be something I enjoy. Or, at least, learn something positive from that experience. Grant me the... courage to change the things I can.

All of that to say: job hunting sucks, and I never want to do it again. But please stay tuned, because I will very soon be ranting about how increasing cuts to military servicemembers' benefits and pay leads to spouses needing to find employment to make ends meet, but since they're military and they move relatively frequently it's very difficult for them to sustain consistent, gainful employment (AHEM.).